Number of Israeli Facebook members jumps by 100% since mid-October
By Maayan Cohen and Reuters
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/922669.html
November 11, 2007
The number of members on the Israel network of Facebook,
the social networking site, has jumped by 100 percent since
mid-October, from 74,000 to 152,000.
Israeli Facebook users are considered to comprise a "quality
audience" - users between the ages of 25 and 40 who are
"early adapters," or among the first users of new technologies.
As was reported by TheMarker last week, Israeli advertisers are
now beginning to publicize on the popular site.
Tamir Gordon, CEO of the advertising company "Ark Interactive,"
told TheMarker last week that their clients expressed interest in
joining Facebook after hearing about it from their friends. He said
that establishing a presence among a target audience via Facebook
costs roughly NIS 15,000-20,000, approximately ten times less
than the cost of doing so via Walla, the Israeli Internet portal.
Until recently, a company could advertise on Facebook only through
the use of banners, but this changed last week, when the social
network unveiled a new advertising system that will let companies
introduce ads into the user pages of its 50 million members, and
launch dedicated pages on the site for their brands.
The new "Facebook Ads" system will allow users to have their
online behavior, including advertiser sites they visit or the products
they buy, appear on the news feeds if they choose.
Advertisers that join the program can also pay for a small ad for
their product to appear any time it is mentioned on a news feed.
Such ads appear on a personal page that only the user sees,
and not on their public profiles